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National Intelligence Council report: sun setting on the American century

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November 21, 2008 in Economy, Environment, Government, Military, Obama, US News, War and World. 0 Comments

Courtesy The London Times Online.

The next two decades will see a world living with the daily threat of nuclear war, environmental catastrophe and the decline of America as the dominant global power, according to a frighteningly bleak assessment by the US intelligence community.

“The world of the near future will be subject to an increased likelihood of conflict over resources, including food and water, and will be haunted by the persistence of rogue states and terrorist groups with greater access to nuclear weapons,” said the report by the National Intelligence Council, a body of analysts from across the US intelligence community.

The analysts said that the report had been prepared in time for Barack Obama’s entry into the Oval office on January 20, where he will be faced with some of the greatest challenges of any newly elected US president.

“The likelihood that nuclear weapons will be used will increase with expanded access to technology and a widening range of options for limited strikes,” the 121-page assessment said.

The analysts draw attention to an already escalating nuclear arms race in the Middle East and anticipate that a growing number of rogue states will be prepared to share their destructive technology with terror groups. “Over the next 15-20 years reactions to the decisions Iran makes about its nuclear programme could cause a number of regional states to intensify these efforts and consider actively pursuing nuclear weapons,” the reportGlobal Trends 2025 said. “This will add a new and more dangerous dimension to what is likely to be increasing competition for influence within the region,” it said.

The spread of nuclear capabilities will raise questions about the ability of weak states to safeguard them, it added. “If the number of nuclear-capable states increases, so will the number of countries potentially willing to provide nuclear assistance to other countries or to terrorists.”

-Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

Police: Man in wheelchair robs bank

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shinai

November 16, 2008 in American Society, Crime, Disability, Lock Up and Police. 0 Comments

FLORIDA TODAY

A 45-year-old wheelchair-bound man who allegedly robbed a Space Coast Credit Union branch on Merritt Island this afternoon was arrested minutes later near the parking lot of a FLORIDA TODAY office a block away from the bank, the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office said.

Merritt Island resident Christopher Reed was arrested about 4:20 p.m., about 10 minutes after the bank was robbed, according to investigators.

Investigators said Reed, who is a paraplegic confined to a motorized wheelchair, entered the bank on the 400 block of Fortenberry Road on Merritt Island, and demanded money, after telling the employees that he was armed with an explosive device.

“He left the bank with an undisclosed amount of money,” according to Brevard County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Vic DeSantis.

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Nebraska fears rush to drop off kids before haven law change

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November 16, 2008 in American Society, Economy, Government, Law and Justice, Policy, Poverty and Regulation. 0 Comments

OMAHA, Nebraska (CNN) – Nebraska officials said they’re concerned about an apparent rush by parents to drop their teenage children off at hospitals before lawmakers change the state’s troubled “safe haven” law.

The latest cases came the day before the state Legislature kicked off a special session to add an age limit to the law.

On Thursday, a boy, 14, and his 17-year-old sister were dropped off at an Omaha hospital; the girl ran away from the hospital, officials said. A 5-year-old boy was left by his mother at a different hospital, officials said.

The day before, a father flew in from Miami, Florida, to leave his teenage son at a hospital, officials said.

“Please don’t bring your teenager to Nebraska,” Gov. Dave Heineman said. “Think of what you are saying. You are saying you no longer support them. You no longer love them.” Watch as lawmakers convene to change law »

Nebraska’s safe haven law was intended to allow parents to hand over an infant anonymously to a hospital without being prosecuted. Of the 34 children who have been dropped off at hospitals, officials said, not one has been an infant.

All but six have been older than 10, according to a Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services analysis.

State officials said that because of legislative procedures, it will take at least a week to change the language of the safe haven law, creating a window where more parents could try to take advantage of the loophole in the statute.

“We are ready and prepared that that situation occurs,” said Todd Landry of the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. “We want people to understand that this is not the right way of getting the service for your child, your teenager or your family.”

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Lawsuit seeks to bankrupt Klan group

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November 14, 2008 in American Society, Civil/Human Rights, Crime, Law Suit, Law and Justice, Racism and Threats/Violence. 0 Comments

(CNN) — It was a mismatch from the start: a 16-year-old boy, 5-feet, 3-inches tall and 150 pounds, against two reputed Ku Klux Klansmen, the biggest standing 6-feet, 5-inches and tipping the scales at 300 pounds.

Jordan Gruver, an American citizen of Panamanian descent, took a beating that July day in 2006 at the Meade County fair in Brandenberg, Kentucky. He was called names, spat upon, doused with alcohol, knocked to the ground and punched and kicked.

When the blows stopped, Gruver had a broken jaw and left forearm, two cracked ribs and cuts and bruises.

Now, with the weight of the Southern Poverty Law Center behind him, Gruver is fighting back in a civil courtroom. Gruver and the center are suing the Imperial Klans of America, and they hope to win damages large enough to put the supremacist group out of business.

An all-white jury — seven men and seven women — was chosen Wednesday to hear Gruver’s lawsuit against the Klan and two of its members. They are identified in court papers as “Imperial Wizard” Ron Edwards, and Jarred R. Hensley, the Ohio Klan’s “Grand Titan.”

Two others — Joshua Cowles, the Klan’s “Exalted Cyclops,” and Andrew W. Watkins, the Klan’s “Imperial Gothi” and webmaster — have settled out of court, according to a pretrial brief.

The lawsuit identifies Cowles, Hensley and Watkins as the men who confronted Gruver and insulted him with ethnic epithets while on a recruiting mission at the fair. Hensley and Watkins, the suit alleges, knocked Gruver to the ground and repeatedly struck and kicked him.

-Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

Utah Legislators Call LDS Bluff on LGBT Rights

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November 11, 2008 in American Society, Civil/Human Rights, Government, Religion and State and Local. 0 Comments

Courtesy The Campaign Silo:

A group of at least five Utah legislators have asked the Mormon leadership to join their call for state legislation protecting LGBT rights to hospital visitation, medical care, fair housing, inheritance, and non-discrimination in employment, based on a statement from the Church itself last week that the Church “does not object to rights for same-sex couples” in any of these areas.

Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints have said they do not object to rights for same-sex couples, as long as those rights do not infringe on the integrity of the traditional family.

Now, gay-rights activists and at least five Utah legislators are asking the Church to demonstrate its conviction.

The group Equality Utah says the Church made the invitation, and they’re accepting it. “The LDS Church says it does not oppose same-sex couples receiving such rights as hospitalization and medical care, fair housing rights or probate rights,” said Mike Thompson, executive director of Equality Utah.

In their attempt to appear non-bigoted the day after Prop 8 took away marriage equality rights throughout California, the Mormon leadership detailed a long list of rights of same-sex couples to which they do not object. Now, these legislators will introduce bills to protect all of these rights, and they ask the Church leadership to support them.

“Setting aside the marriage issue for now, there is so much in that space that is short of marriage that we need to talk about; and we’re saying, ‘Let’s talk about it,’” said Utah Sen. Scott McCoy.

Those issues include rights in medical care and hospital visitation, housing and employment protections, insurance rights for a partner, a statewide domestic partner registry. Repealing the second part of Utah’s Amendment 3 would officially recognize gay couples.

-Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

Alaska’s Fishy Vote Total?

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November 10, 2008 in Dirty Tricks, Election '08, Election Fraud, Politics, State and Local, Voting and video. 0 Comments

Courtesy Rawstory:

The 2008 presidential race is over, but several Senate races still remain undecided. Georgia is headed for a runoff, Minnesota for a recount — and in Alaska things just keep getting stranger.

“It looks like senator and convicted felon Ted Stevens and Congressman-currently-under-investigation Don Young will both hold onto their seats,” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow noted on Thursday. “That said, there’s a case to be made that there’s something fishy going on up there.”

Even though the polls this year have generally been pretty accurate, they were way off in Alaska. Stevens was running between 7% and 22% behind his Democratic challenger in the polls, but now he is narrowly ahead in the vote count

Polling analysis website 538.com comments, “The emerging conventional wisdom is that there was some sort of a Bradley Effect in this contest — voters told pollsters that they weren’t about to vote for that rascal Ted Stevens, when in fact they were perfectly happy to. Convicted felons are the new black, it would seem. The problem with this theory is that the polling failures in Alaska weren’t unique to Stevens.”

The polls also consistently showed Rep. Young as losing by at least 6%, but he is currently ahead in the vote count by 8%. Even in the presidential race, where polls showed McCain leading by 14% or less, the vote count has him winning by 61% to 35% — precisely the same margin as George Bush in 2004. That represents a polling error of at least 11% to 14% in all three races.

At the same time, total voter turnout appears to be about 11% lower in Alaska this year than in 2004 — despite over 20,000 new registrations, heavy turnout in the primaries, record early voting, long lines at the polls on Election Day, and the state’s own governor being on the ballot, all of which had led to an expectation of record participation.

Maddow turned for explanations to Nate Silver of 538.com, who pointed out that tens of thousands of absentee ballots, early votes, and provisional votes are yet to be counted. However, these appear to be spread fairly evenly across the state, not concentrated in Democratic areas, so even a final tally is unlikely to jibe with the polls. “Clearly it didn’t go how the pollsters expected,” Silver commented.

-Article Continues With Video @ Soured Site.

U.S., Canada Increasingly at Odds over Water

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November 8, 2008 in Big Business, Government, Policy, Regulation, State and Local, Water and World. 0 Comments

Courtesy Celsias:

The United States and Canada have often been uneasy neighbors, perhaps never more so than when Canada included the U.S. on a list ofcountries that torture inmates  .

That flashpoint aside, Canada’s recent habit of distancing itself may have less to do with politics and more to do with a perceivedextraterritorial expansion   of U.S. environmental laws - a state of affairs that wakens Canadian fears of being gobbled up by its larger, stronger and louder neighbor.

For example, in July of this year, the National Academies   expressed the opinion   that the United States should pass Great Lakes protection laws more closely mirroring the standards sets by the International Maritime Organization   (IMO) - standards which Canada had already adopted.

On October 3, President Bush took up the challenge by signing theGreat Lakes Compact  , a complex, 13-part bill that will protect the Lakes’ water from unwarranted diversion and protect the water itself via standards for everything from industrial chemicals to sewage, including ballast water regulations aimed at preventing the introduction and spread of invasive species   (PDF).

This Compact, almost a decade in the making   and several times stalled by state governors unwilling to accept a broader but more limiting portfolio of protections, is now law. Diversions outside the Lakes area will require the unanimous agreement of all eight   governors (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York) and the heads of adjacent Canadian provinces (Quebec and Ontario).

That the Compact is still not as comprehensive as standards set by the IMO is unfortunate. Even so, the Compact is by far the most thorough bill yet passed in the U.S. regarding Great Lakes water, and not a moment too soon as drought   spreads throughout the U.S. southeast, southwest, the Pacific Coast, Idaho, and even into the upper Great Plains.

The bill, a political hot potato among U.S. governors, finally won grudging Canadian acceptance when the U.S. Senate incorporated an amendment, at the Council of Canadian’s request, prohibiting sales to water bottlers  . Most likely, Canadians felt they had no choice. NAFTA, or the North American Free Trade Agreement, clearly defines water as both a service and an investment  , opening wide the door to sales south of the U.S. border by any U.S. government agency looking for an edge in Mexico.

These water-sale schemes weren’t isolated to the U.S, however. The Compact, which serves an area in the U.S. and contiguous Canadian provinces with a population of approximately 40 million, is the offshoot of a 1999 proposal from Ontario   to ship Lakes water to Asia, and Ontario was not the only schemer. At various times, British Columbia, Quebec and Newfoundland had also considered licensing bulk water exports.

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Just 3 ‘superbanks’ now dominate industry

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November 8, 2008 in Banks and Finance, Economy, Monopoly, Regulation, State and Local and The Consumer. 0 Comments

Courtesy MSNBC:

The financial crisis that has been sweeping the globe has reshaped nearly every corner of the economy, but no industry has been altered more radically than banking.

Several of the nation’s biggest banks have failed or been absorbed by healthier institutions, leaving three giant “superbanks” with an unprecedented concentration of market power: Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo.

While that may be good news for emerging giants and the failing companies they helped rescue, the new oligopoly raises troubling questions about regulation and competition, analysts and consumer advocates say.

“Bank fees are going up, up, up, and that’s the danger to consumers as more of these banks consolidate,” says Sally Greenberg, executive director of the National Consumer League. “It’s difficult for the average person to get a bank account that doesn’t involve fees, and if you get into financial distress you’re cooked, and you’ll be ‘fee-ed’ to death.”

According to a recently released banking fee study from Bankrate.com, ATM surcharges rose 11 percent this year to an average of $1.97, and the fee for a bounced checks rose 2.5 percent to an average $28.95.

“Consumers are going to be victims of higher and more punitive fees,” Greenberg predicts.

Moreover, many analysts worry about how federal and state authorities, who were unable to prevent the current financial industry meltdown, will be able to monitor the new giant banks that combine a wide range of operations from investment banking to consumer lending.

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So Little Time, So Much Damage

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November 5, 2008 in Abortion, American Society, Banks and Finance, Environment, Inequality, Opinion, Policy, Surveillance, The Precidency and Treasury. 0 Comments

Courtesy NYTimes:

While Americans eagerly vote for the next president, here’s a sobering reminder: As of Tuesday, George W. Bush still has 77 days left in the White House — and he’s not wasting a minute.

President Bush’s aides have been scrambling to change rules and regulations on the environment, civil liberties and abortion rights, among others — few for the good. Most presidents put on a last-minute policy stamp, but in Mr. Bush’s case it is more like a wrecking ball. We fear it could take months, or years, for the next president to identify and then undo all of the damage.

Here is a look — by no means comprehensive — at some of Mr. Bush’s recent parting gifts and those we fear are yet to come.

CIVIL LIBERTIES We don’t know all of the ways that the administration has violated Americans’ rights in the name of fighting terrorism. Last month, Attorney General Michael Mukasey rushed out new guidelines for the F.B.I. that permit agents to use chillingly intrusive techniques to collect information on Americans even where there is no evidence of wrongdoing.

Agents will be allowed to use informants to infiltrate lawful groups, engage in prolonged physical surveillance and lie about their identity while questioning a subject’s neighbors, relatives, co-workers and friends. The changes also give the F.B.I. — which has a long history of spying on civil rights groups and others — expanded latitude to use these techniques on people identified by racial, ethnic and religious background.

The administration showed further disdain for Americans’ privacy rights and for Congress’s power by making clear that it will ignore a provision in the legislation that established the Department of Homeland Security. The law requires the department’s privacy officer to account annually for any activity that could affect Americans’ privacy — and clearly stipulates that the report cannot be edited by any other officials at the department or the White House.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has now released a memo asserting that the law “does not prohibit” officials from homeland security or the White House from reviewing the report. The memo then argues that since the law allows the officials to review the report, it would be unconstitutional to stop them from changing it. George Orwell couldn’t have done better.

THE ENVIRONMENT The administration has been especially busy weakening regulations that promote clean air and clean water and protect endangered species.

Mr. Bush, or more to the point, Vice President Dick Cheney, came to office determined to dismantle Bill Clinton’s environmental legacy, undo decades of environmental law and keep their friends in industry happy. They have had less success than we feared, but only because of the determined opposition of environmental groups, courageous members of Congress and protests from citizens. But the White House keeps trying.

Mr. Bush’s secretary of the interior, Dirk Kempthorne, has recently carved out significant exceptions to regulations requiring expert scientific review of any federal project that might harm endangered or threatened species (one consequence will be to relieve the agency of the need to assess the impact of global warming on at-risk species). The department also is rushing to remove the gray wolf from the endangered species list — again. The wolves were re-listed after a federal judge ruled the government had not lived up to its own recovery plan.

Article continues @ Sourced Site,

Follow Up: Voters weigh in on same-sex marriage, abortion

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November 5, 2008 in Abortion, American Society, Ballot Measures and Follow Up. 0 Comments

Courtesy Market Watch:

…Voters appeared less enthusiastic about measures that aimed to restrict abortion. In Colorado, voters rejected Amendment 48, which sought to give fetuses the same rights as people by granting legal rights to “any human being from the moment of fertilization.”

It marked the first time a state ever attempted to define human life on the ballot, said Jennie Drage Bowser, senior elections analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures in Denver. Had it passed, the implications may have extended beyond the abortion debate and into issues as disparate as criminal justice, estate taxes and stem-cell research, she said.

Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, agreed, saying the measure could have banned all abortions or been used to block in vitro fertilization or to keep doctors from providing lifesaving medical care to a woman if the treatment needed could harm a fertilized egg.

“This rejection by voters of Amendment 48 sends a clear message: personal, private health-care decisions should be made by women, their doctors, and their families, not by politicians,” Richards said in a statement. “We need government policies that improve access to health care, not take it away.”

Complete Article @ Sourced Site.